This Time Imperfect
by Cap'n Pirate Monkey
Summary: A Turk and a ninja, staring at the sea, craving something to fill the empty spaces inside. Can the breach be healed? Short fic with slight Reffie overtones. Written aged 16, quality is questionable.


**This Time Imperfect** 'Imagined heart, I disappear 

_Seems no-one will appear here and make me real_

_There are no flowers, no not this time_

_There will be no angels gracing the lines_

_Just these stark words I find._

_I'd show a smile but I'm too weak_

_I'd share with you, could I only speak,_

_Just how much this hurts me._

_I'd tell you how it haunts me_

_Cuts through my days and sinks into my dreams'_

_"This Time Imperfect"_

_A.F.I_

She stood on the shore, feet pressed against the cool sand, feeling the lukewarm waves spit against her bare legs. Just a shadow against the all-consuming might of the seemingly infinite ocean.

Grey. Grey everywhere. Where was the colour? Dusk was approaching, bringing with it the indecisive grey bloom of darkness, swallowing the overcast sky until morning when it would retreat. No sun to illuminate the sickly grey waters. She reached up to brush away a vagrant lock of hair; her skin was grey too, colourless and anaemic, like the sand, like the sky, like the night. Nothing. No colour, nothing to differentiate this morbid scenario from the dreams that had plagued her. O, the dreams, the dreams of the grey room. The grey room where she was alone, no walls or windows or doors, just her and the grey. And though she wasn't confined by four walls…there was something sickeningly familiar about the greyscape before her.

She turned. Just up the stone steps was the clapboard shack she and her friends called 'home'…for now, at least, until they grew restless of Junon and its monotone ambience, of the lethargy and the inertia. But she had to escape, just for a minute. Just to see the world beyond Junon. And it was relieving to see it still existed…to step outside and see something beyond the four grey walls of her nightmare. Above her, the cadaverous remains of the electrical tower still stood, still hung, silently revelling in its own suicide. Nothing but death out here. Nothing but the smell of bitter salt and burnt-out fuses. Nothing but the grey ocean. Nothing at all.

Yuffie lowered herself onto the sand, felt it grind against her skin. So real. She leaned forward, enjoying the friction of sand against soft skin. Sometimes she needed this time alone to convince herself that everything was still real.

She closed her eyes against the accusing stare of the newborn moon.

                                                ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

He hadn't intended to come this far. But there was something enticing about the caress of the sea breeze, cool against one's skin, especially at night. Something inviting about the silence. Something beautiful about the way the moon's dirty face was revered by the ocean, so much so that the forever travelling waters had created a faint, quivering replica. The sea welcomes even the filthiest of faces. Even the dirtiest of hands.

He shook his head, amused by his own train of thoughts. Redemption was over-rated. And what redemption was there for a soul as dead as his? His hands had shown countless thousands of anonymous, unimportant people what it was to feel pain. Most, if not all of those people had gone on to die. And he hadn't even flinched. A look into his barren blue eyes would reveal nothing but the cold of the mortuary slab, the desolation of the snowfields. Two steel gates, chained and bolted shut.

And what was the point in living each day in pretence? Playing the game, putting up a vile façade. Sure, he liked the easy sex, the giving sleep of drunkenness, even the sweet elucidation of occasional depression. Yeah, that was all great. But was there anything more than that? Was there anything more than the grey monotony of Turk life? To wake, to kill, to fuck, to drink, to sleep, to start the cycle all over again. 

He kicked the sand, feeling the gritty powder fill his shoes.

What was it to live outside that cycle?

He saw the girl sat by the steps of Lower Junon. Saw the flash of forest green, the yellow sneakers sat side by side on the sand beside her. 

He kept walking.

                                                *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

It was the sound of footsteps crunching in the dry sand that first made her look up. 

Her eyes focused on a blur of crimson, a delicious bloom of colour burning up the grey monotony like a newborn flaming eating at a black and white photo. His skin had taken on the grey tint of the surrounding moonlight, yet his insanely beautiful eyes, cold blue tinted with flecks of the brightest turquoise, served as vivid reminders that he was a man of many shades. Both physically and emotionally.

"What do you want?"

He shrugged. The absence of a blue jacket unnerved her some. The slender curves of his shoulders were visible beneath the thin, worn stuff of his shirt, which, as usual, was buttoned in a haphazard fashion, as if he had dressed in the dark. "Nothing much" he said, and this was true. _'Nothing but the company of another human being…one who understands what it is to be regarded with mistrust'_

To his unending amusement, she eyed him with that same mistrustful gaze. Pale violet eyes scanned his lean body. Devoid of all weapons and the blue suit jacket that he wore like a battered, outdated badge of honour he looked all too human. It was disconcerting.

Finally she spoke. "You gonna sit down or what?"

After a short pause, a pause deliberately designed to aggravate her some, he nodded and silently lowered himself onto the sand. It was cool and yielding beneath him. His long fingers sunk into the grey powder and he pinched some beneath his thumb and forefinger, letting it fall slowly to the ground as if he were an hourglass. 

She mimicked him, scooping up a whole handful and letting it fall. "What brings you down here?"

"Boredom" he replied, and this was partly the truth. He'd walked so far…all the way from the lower reaches of Midgar, past the mountains, all along the shore. From early afternoon he had walked, stopping only to discard the twin burdens of his jacket and nightstick. He still had his gun tucked in the hollow between his thin hips and belt if anything attacked him. And it wasn't like he couldn't fist-fight. 

All because Midgar was getting stale. All because the fabric of his life was marred by this…this _hole_, this great, gaping tear. And somehow he knew that the answer was along this beach. Call it a premonition. Call it intuition. Call it the half crazy mental ramblings of a feverish man driven to the edge by his own pointlessness. Either he would find something to mend the breach, find a reason…or he would die alone, on this never-ending stretch of shore, swallowed by Mother Sea as her greedy hands groped the coast, swallowed every loose morsel she could find to sate her perpetual hunger. Either was fine.

She gave a small, bitter smile. "Boredom" she repeated thoughtfully. There was more than a hint of disbelief in her voice.

He nodded "Why are you here, then?"

Part of her wanted to make some flippant remark about her own boredom, but she didn't. Somehow, she felt so very serious. On previous meetings their conversation had always been filled to the brim with libellous remarks and sarcastic mockery. No room for serious conversation. Neither had though the other capable. But it occurred to her then that maybe he was capable of something more than a few offhand remarks about her royal status and her boobs (or lack thereof) After all…nobody undertakes a spur-of-the-moment pilgrimage for the sake of a few laughs. It also occurred to her that, by some amazing miracle, he was completely sober. 

"Looking at the world makes me feel alive," she answered.

He raised an eyebrow. "That's deep talk for you, brat"

"And taking an expedition from Midgar to Junon isn't at all deep?"

He lowered his eyebrow, lowered his head, diverted his gaze. "I told you" he scowled, poking at a half-buried stone "I got bored"

She nodded, voice knowing "Whatever you say"

He shook his head, grinning without mirth "Look, princess, I can always move on. I don't have to stick around. If you'd rather me get out of your oh-so-royal hair, I'm not gonna protest"

He'd just given her all the ammo she needed for a scathing attack. But…as she looked out at the ocean, at the miles or grey infinity, at his flaming red hair and strangely soulful ice-cap eyes…_'I need this, just so I know and will always know life outside that room. I need something that isn't grey, something that isn't part of Junon. I need something different so I don't keel over and die, and it just so happens to be him. How can I send him away when he's all that I have to keep me sane right now?'_

She shook her head. "Stay if you want"

This threw him a little. No juvenile rants? No indignant remarks? "I'm serious, brat, I can get up and go on my merry way any time you want shot of me"

"Stay if you want" she repeated, not really listening now, just staring at the sea. Bleak waves kept rolling in, bringing with them the bitter stink of salty decay. Limp corpses of seaweed rode the curdled foamy crests as they arced; lost their balance, hit the ground. Even in the peace of night, even in the ceasefire of world sleep, death kept one rotting finger in the proceedings. 

Sitting next to her, staring contemplatively at the filthy visage of the moon as it sat like a bloated leader among captive stars, was one of death's hands.

Somehow it didn't bother her at all.

His low voice interrupted her train of thoughts.

"Have you ever sat down and wondered…" he trailed off, shaking his head. "Forget it. This is stupid"

She leaned forward, violet eyes curious. "No, go on"

He sighed, folded his arms against his chest, leaned back. "Have you ever sat back and though about all the choices you've ever made…you know, about all those decisions that led you to where you are today. Have you ever wondered what would happen if you went back and chose option B?"

She smiled, and there was a peculiar gentleness about her lips. A softness in her eyes. A maturity and depth that completely belied her youthful face. "That's deep talk for you, Turkey"

A smile crept onto his lips. He couldn't help it. "That's how I talk when I'm bored," he said, shrugging in mock nonchalance.

"Oh?" she lowered her eyes. Her dark eyelashes shadowed her amethyst eyes for a moment, smooth skin illuminated by the grimy moon. "Makes a change"

"Ditto" 

There was a long pause, a pause punctuated by the rhythmic vomit of the waves against the shore. A pause in which cool blue searched dusky lilac without even knowing it. A pause in which tainted pupils looked upon innocent skin with envy and maybe, just maybe, something a little more than that one brute sin. 

She eyed him with naked honesty. "I…I can't deal with this anymore" she said as means of confession. "I don't suppose you care, but…" her voice trailed off into nothing, sentence culminating in one final, defeated shrug. She lowered her head. Thick chocolate hair fell before her face, dark grey in the abstract moonlight. Her hand brushed it back, tucked it behind her ear. The delicate curve of her cheekbones rested gracefully a few fingertips beneath the dark curl of her lower eyelashes, highlighted by the cold glow. 

"Love to make assumptions, don't you?" he muttered, voice a low rumble in his throat. He seemed put out. One absent finger traced a line in the sand.

"What do you care?" she retorted a little sulkily. Her eyes were trained on the sand before her feet, a hollow of grey powder dug by her own toes. 

"Try me," he pushed gently.

She pressed her lips together, formed a thin, hard white line. "I don't know…I'm not used to being so settled…I don't want to lead this life right now. Maybe when I'm twenty or thirty like everyone else. But I feel like…there's this huge world out there and I rushed through it without even taking the time to see. There's so much more I have to do before I settle"

He seemed intrigued "Like what?"

"Like…see the world from the mountains of the Great Glacier. Like explore the slums of Midgar. I grew up in Wutai, so sheltered, trapped in my dad's pagoda. And when I hit sixteen, I left. Because I wanted to see the world"

"Haven't you seen enough of the world?" he questioned. "Didn't you travel the world in the Highwind?"

She nodded "I travelled the world…but everywhere we went, we had to fight. I want to see what the world is like now, after all the death and destruction. I want to see what's left, what's changed. Not spend the rest of my life cooped up in a dead end town"

He laughed without mirth "You want a chance to break out of this mould. You want to prove to the world that you're not some two-dimensional royal brat. You want a chance to grow and change and you can't do that when you're surrounded by people who can't seem to see the girl outside the stereotype. All they see is the brat. But you know there's so much more than that. You know you can grow and bloom but you can't when those around you are desperate to cling on to the character they've created for you, because that's all they know and all they ever want to know"

Her eyed widened, became curious. "How do you know all that?"

Another laugh, another joyless smile. "Trust me, princess, I understand. Do you know what it would mean to me to have someone look at me without thinking 'alcoholic, whore, murderer'?" he let the question hang in the air unanswered. Up above, a star wept for him the way it had so many years ago above a well in Nibelheim, a single tear streaking across the sky above the heads of two innocent children completely oblivious to the struggle before them.

She rested her head on her knees. "I don't think that when I look at you"

"That so?" he sighed, leaned back against the rickety stone wall, feeling the pressure of jagged bricks against his back. "What do you think?"

Another pause. Another moment of silence in which the gravelly cough of the ocean served as background sound for searching eyes. And then she broke the gaze, lifting her head, closing her eyes for a brief moment. A beautifully serene smile crossed her delicate lips. She opened her mouth, closed it again, the smile replaced by her usual elfin grin. Merry mischief glimmered in the foreground of her eyes 

"I just think 'fuckbiscuit'" 

He stared at her a moment, cold and unresponsive. Then his thin lips curved, parted, gave way to a peal of genuine, throaty laughter. Her laughter joined his in chorus, two imperfections blighting the beaches of Junon in an exquisitely beautiful way. And in that instant it seemed that nothing else really mattered…just that moment of wonderful anaesthetic. Just that moment of blissful forgetfulness. 

"That's a crappy insult, you know," he noted matter-of-factly after their irrational laughter had dissipated. "I only laughed because it was such a poor insult" 

"Only trying to lighten the mood," she said, lowering her head back down. Relaxed now. Maybe some good had come of her need for space and his need to see forever in the shape of infinite sand. Maybe the vagrant moon had just influenced a meeting of spirits. Who could say? 

Maybe she had inadvertently healed the breach in him.

"You didn't need to" he told her. "I feel kinda okay now"

She nodded. "So do I"

"And…I can understand the whole 'seeing the world' thing. If you ever want to actually do it…I'm sure I could take a few months out of my busy and important schedule to do the princess a favour" he stood up, brushed sand off his blue trousers. 

"Where are you going now?" she asked, staying seated, looking up at his lean body, illuminated by the backlit canopy of the sky. He shrugged, infuriatingly nonchalant as always. "Back home, I guess" he said, stretching his aching legs. Another long walk, through the rest of the night. He would walk right towards the dawn. Head for the dusky pink light of morning as it bloomed just beyond the towering backbone of the snowfields, a far off stain on the horizon. Head back to Midgar, back to the filth and the squalor and the unholy trinity of sex, booze and death. But it would be different this time.

"Reno…" she looked up at him, eyes questioning. "Why did you _really_ walk all the way down here?"

"To find something," he answered. That was the only answer he was going to give her, so she would have to be content with it.

"And did you find it?"

He smiled slightly. _'I needed a reason. I needed to know that I wasn't alone in this, and I think I found it in you. I found my reason in you. How fucked up is that? You just stitched up the hole in my life. I think…maybe…I…I'm…'_

A nod. "I think I did, yeah"

"Well…at least you didn't make a pointless trip. You gonna be okay for the walk home? You need something to eat or drink?"

He shook his head. "I'll be fine" he squinted into the east. Night was still dominant, its thick navy drapes still thrown across the sky as proof of her ownership. The moon still sat proud in the centre, seeing all and smiling in satisfaction. 

"And you know, kid, I was serious about the travelling thing. Any time you want to get out of this dump, come find me and I'll come with you"

She cocked her head to the side "Just like that?"

He nodded "Just like that. But…there's one condition"

She raised her eyebrows in anticipation.

"…You bring your own sick bags"

A small round of laughter. "You got it, Turkey"

"Take care of yourself, princess"

With one last smile, the redheaded Turk set off back the way he had come, re-tracing all the old footsteps he had left. She watched him walk until his silhouette had faded, melding effortlessly with the black of the distance. Gone. Gone, but not forever. Maybe she would take him up on that offer of his. 

She looked back out to sea.

The night sky had take on a faint blue tinge. 

He had gone, and the grey had gone with him.

A/N this one is dedicated to all those Reffie fans out there. I didn't feel like writing an out-and-out sapfest (though I'm rather partial to a regular dosage of Reffie sap ^^) so here we go. Inspired by the beautiful music of AFI and, in particular, the hidden track on 'Sing The Sorrow'. I don't know if it's just on the UK version, but try and find it if you can. It's called 'This Time Imperfect'…and it's beautiful.

_~TIO (The Voodoo Fyrefly)_


End file.
